Operation LBB (Learn to Bake Bread)

I have heard from people in Shenyang that while there is a huge variety of delicious foods and even those that we're used to here, that plain old sandwich bread is hard to find. 

NJ eats a ham sandwich for lunch every day.  (His choice, not mine)  What to do?

Thanks to Pinterest, I've been finding a lot of bread recipes and trying my hand at bread baking.  Bread baking is simple.  Usually just 4-5 ingredients.  Don't even need a fancy bread machine. 

The problem is, I am a horrible baker.  I just don't do well with exact and precise steps and measurements.  Love to cook, hate to bake.  I even screw up the box mixes.  Once I was trying to make a batch of Jiffy corn muffins.  I mixed it up, put it in the oven, turned around, only to find that I somehow forgot to pour in the 1/4 cup of oil that I had measured out.  They were the driest corn muffins ever.

The first bread I made was English Muffin Bread.  Lisa passed along this recipe to me after I had J.  She brought it as part of our baby meal and I fell in love with the bread.  It has only been 28 months, but I finally tried making it myself. 

The final result?  Not too shabby.  It doesn't taste as good as I remember when I was eating Lisa's.  A bit on the dense side.  Bread baking experts, any suggestions as to what I could have done to make it a bit fluffier?